Genesis 44:18–34

¹⁸But Judah drew near to him and said, “Please my lord, let your servant speak a word in the ears of my lord, and let not your anger burn^a against your servant, for you are like Pharaoh himself.^{b 19}My lord had asked his servants, saying, ‘Do you have a father or a brother?’ ²⁰And we said to my lord, ‘We have an aged father, and a younger brother, the child of his old age, and his brother died, and he alone remains from his mother, and his father loves him.’ ²¹Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me that I may set my eyes upon him.’ ²²Then we said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father; if he should leave his father, then he^c would die.’ ²³Then you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not again see my face.’ ²⁴And it happened that we went up to your servant, my father, and told him the words of my lord. ²⁵And when our father said, ‘Go back, buy a little food for us,’ ²⁶then we said, ‘We cannot go down. If our youngest brother is with us, then we shall go down. For we will not be able to see the face of the man unless our youngest brother is with us.’ ²⁷Then your servant, my father, said to us, ‘You yourselves know that my wife bore two sons to me. ²⁸One went out from me, and I said, “Surely he must have been torn to pieces,” and I have never seen him since. ²⁹And if you take this one also from me, and he encounters harm, you will bring down my gray head in sorrow to Sheol.’ ³⁰So now, when I come to your servant, my father, and the boy is not with us—now his life is bound up with his life—³¹it shall happen that when he sees that the boy is gone, he will die. And your servants will bring down the gray head of your servant, our father, to Sheol with sorrow. ³²For your servant is pledged as surety for the boy by my father, saying, If I do not bring him to you, then I shall be culpable to my father forever. ³³So then, please let your servant remain in place of the boy as a slave to my lord, and let the boy go up with his brothers. ³⁴For how can I go up to my father if the boy is not with me? I do not want to see^d the misery which will find my father.”